Innocent Blood (20 page)

He would see how this played out before reacting.

A small girl approached their group, wearing a blue hat with a white pom-pom. She fiddled with a stringed puppet. It was the child whom Erin had bought a gift for earlier. Jordan noted the girl also wasn’t wearing any gloves or mittens.

Christian followed his gaze to her bare fingers. He seemed to listen for a moment with his head slightly cocked, then nodded.

No heartbeat.

So she was another of Rasputin’s
strigoi
kids, her innocent face hiding a creature twice as old as Jordan and twice as deadly.

Nadia and Rhun grew stiffer to either side, ready for a fight. The countess simply held one graceful hand to a scarf that covered her damaged throat; her other remained handcuffed to Rhun. She sized up the square in a leisurely way, as if looking for advantages instead of enemies.

As the singing ended, the choirmaster gave a speech in Swedish, wrapping things up, signaling the end of the festival for this night. More of the crowd dispersed toward the streets. A young mother picked up a white-robed boy from the stage, bundled him up in a winter coat, and gave him a thermos full of a steaming beverage.

Lucky kid.

Other parents claimed other children until only Rasputin’s boy remained. With a slight bow toward them, he jumped off the platform and strode toward them with all the pride of Russian nobility.

Christian confronted the boy as he reached them. “Where is your master?”

The kid smiled, drawing a chill down Jordan’s spine. “I have two messages, but first you must answer a question. His Holiness has been watching you since you arrived. He says that you have come with
two
Women of Learning. The one he met in Russia and another from the true line of Bathory.”

It unnerved Jordan to learn how much Rasputin already knew about them.

But maybe that was the monk’s goal.

“And why does this concern him?” Rhun asked.

Alexei put his hands on his hips. “He said that there must be a
test
.”

Jordan didn’t like the sound of that.

“By his sworn word to your cardinal, His Holiness will only give the First Angel to the true Woman of Learning. Such is the bargain struck.”

Rhun looked ready to argue, but Erin stopped him.

“What kind of test?” she asked.

“Nothing too dangerous,” Alexei answered. “I will take two of you with
one
Woman of Learning, and Olga”—he motioned to the young girl with the blue hat—“will take two with the
other
.”

“What happens then?” Jordan asked.

“The first woman to find the First Angel wins.”

The countess shifted closer, sensing the game afoot, perhaps seeking a way to betray them. “What happens to the one who loses?”

Alexei shrugged. “I do not know.”

“I’m not putting Erin at risk,” Jordan said. “Find another way.”

The girl, Olga, spoke. Her voice was childishly sibilant, but her words were much too sophisticated and formal for someone of her apparent young age. “His Holiness has informed us to remind you that he possesses the First Angel. If you do not accede to his demands, you will never see him.”

Jordan frowned. Rasputin had them by the shorthairs and knew it.

“Where do we go?” Jordan asked, taking firm hold of Erin, refusing to be separated, irrevocably choosing which team he was going to play on. “Where do we begin this hunt?”

Alexei simply pointed to the sign Jordan had passed earlier.

The one shaped like an outstretched arm.

They were going into the ice maze.

26

December 19, 8:59
P.M.
CET

Stockholm, Sweden

Erin followed Olga’s bobbing white pom-pom around the side of the choir stage and toward a narrow alleyway. The festival’s ice maze had been constructed in a neighboring square, hidden for now by the apartment buildings to either side.

Of course, Rasputin would pick such a maze for his
test
—a place both cold and confusing. And at this late hour with the market now closed, the Russian monk would merely need to post guards at the various entrances to the maze to ensure privacy inside. But what waited for them at the heart of this labyrinth? She pictured the giant
blasphemare
bear that Rasputin had kept caged below his church in St. Petersburg. What monsters waited for them inside here?

As she headed toward the entrance to the alley, Erin was flanked by Christian and Jordan. A glance to the left showed Alexei leading Rhun, Bathory, and Nadia. They appeared on the far side of the choir stage and headed for a different street. Likely it led to another entrance to the hidden ice maze, another starting point.

Rhun glanced toward her as he reached the mouth of his alley.

She lifted an arm, wishing his group well.

Then the two teams vanished into the narrow streets, ready to face the challenge ahead, to outrace each other for the prize at the center of the maze: the First Angel.

As Erin’s group entered the narrow lane, Jordan’s gaze traced the straight rooflines to either side. He kept watch on the heavy doors, ready for any sudden attack. From frosted windows, light spilled onto the snowy cobblestones. Blurred shadows moved about in the warm rooms, the occupants oblivious of the danger beyond their stone walls and wooden doors, blind to the monsters that still haunted the night.

For a moment, Erin wished for such simple ignorance.

But lack of knowledge was not the same as safety.

With her hands in her pockets, she felt Amy’s keepsake, the chunk of warm amber preserving a fragile feather. Her student had been equally unaware of this secret world—and it had killed her just the same.

After a few more steps, the street ended at another square. Erin stopped abruptly, halted by the sheer beauty of what lay ahead. It seemed this labyrinth was not a simple mimic of a hedge maze. Ahead rose a veritable palace of ice, filling the entire square, rising a hundred feet into the air, composed of spires and turrets all made of ice. Hundreds of sculptures topped its walls, etched with hoarfrost and dusted with snow.

Unaffected by the beauty, Olga led them toward a gothic archway in the nearest wall, one of the many entrances into the maze hidden inside. Drawing closer, Erin admired the skill of the artisans who had carved it, the clever way they had cut ice blocks and mortared them together with frozen water, like stonemasons of old.

Lit by yellow streetlights behind her, the gateway glowed citrine.

Olga halted at the entrance. “I leave you to your journeys. The angel awaits you in the center of the castle.”

The girl folded her arms, stepped her legs apart, and stood as still as the statues atop the walls. Even her eyes went blank. A chill ran up Erin’s spine, reminded that this little girl was a
strigoi
. The child had probably been killing for half a century or more.

“I’ll go first,” Christian said, stepping under the archway, his black robe dark against the gold light.

“No.” Erin stopped him with a touch on his sleeve. “It’s my test. I should go first. When it comes to Rasputin, we’d best follow his rules. As the Woman of Learning, I must be the one to find the safe passage to the heart of the maze.”

Jordan and Christian exchanged uneasy glances. She knew that they wanted to protect her. But they couldn’t protect her from this.

Erin turned on her flashlight, stepped past Christian, and entered the passageway.

Massive blue-white walls rose on both sides, about twelve feet high, looking two feet thick, open to the dark sky above. The walkway between the blocks was so narrow that she could touch both sides with her outstretched fingertips. Her boots crunched on snow turned dirty gray by countless visitors.

She shone her light around. Every few feet, the builders had inserted clear ice windows to provide distorted glimpses into neighboring passageways. She reached an archway on the left and peered through it, expecting it to be another leg of the maze, but instead she discovered a miniature courtyard garden, where all the flowers and trellises and bushes were made of ice.

Despite the danger, a smile rose on her face.

The Swedes knew how to put on a winter pageant.

Continuing on, she glanced up at the cloudy sky. There were no stars to guide her steps. A light snow now fell, quiet and clean. Reaching an intersection, she set off toward her left, running her gloved fingertips along the left wall, remembering a child’s trick. The surest way to traverse all the parts of a maze was to keep a hand on one side and follow it through. She might reach dead ends, but the path would eventually end in the center.

Not the fastest route
,
but the surest.

With Jordan and Christian trailing, she picked up the pace, her glove gliding over ice windows, snagging on the parts of the walls made of snow. Her flashlight revealed other chambers. She came upon a space holding a sculpted four-poster bed of ice with two pillows, overhung by an ice chandelier that had been wired with real bulbs. It was dark now, but she tried to imagine it lit, its brilliance shining off all the polished ice.

In another room, she found herself staring at a massive ice elephant, its tusks toward the door, serving as a perch for a line of finely carved birds, some settled in sleep, others with wings outstretched ready to take flight.

Despite the wonders found here, trepidation inside Erin grew with every step, her eyes searching for any traps. What game was Rasputin playing here? The test could not be as simple as solving a path through this maze.

She even searched some of the graffiti carved into the ice by tourists, likely teenagers from all the inscribed hearts holding initials. She found nothing menacing, no clue to some deeper intent by the Russian monk.

She rounded another corner, sure that she was close to the center of the maze by now—then she saw it.

One of the ice windows, its surface polished to the clarity of glass, held an object frozen inside it. She lifted her flashlight in disbelief. Hanging in that window, perfectly preserved by the ice, was a dirty ivory-colored quilt, missing a square in the bottom left corner.

Horrified, Erin stopped and stared.

“What is it?” Jordan asked, adding his light.

How could Rasputin know about this? How had he found it?

“Erin?” Jordan pressed. “You look like you just saw a ghost. Are you okay?”

She peeled off her glove and pressed her bare palm against the ice, the heat of her hand melting the surface, remembering the last time she saw this quilt.

Erin’s small fingertip traced across the ivory-colored muslin. Interlocking squares of willow-green fabric formed a pattern across its surface. Her mother had called the pattern an Irish chain.

She remembered helping her mother make it.

After the day’s work was done, she and her mother would cut and piece squares by candlelight. Her mother’s stitching wasn’t as fine as it once had been, and toward the end, her mother was often too tired to work on it. So Erin took responsibility for the task, carefully sewing each square into place, her young fingers growing faster with each one.

She had finished it in time for her sister Emma’s birth.

Now, only two days old, Emma lay atop that same quilt. Emma had lived her entire life wrapped in it. She was born weak and feverish, but their father forbade that a doctor be called. He decreed that Emma would live or die by God’s will alone.

Emma died.

As Erin could only watch, the pink flush faded from Emma’s tiny face and hands. Her skin grew paler than the ivory of the quilt underneath her. It was not supposed to happen that way. The wrongness of it struck Erin, told her that she could no longer accept her father’s words, her mother’s silences.

She would have to speak her heart, and she would have to leave.

Glancing over her shoulder to make sure that no one saw her, Erin pulled scissors from her dress pocket. The metal snicked together as she cut out one square from the corner of the precious quilt. She folded the square and hid it in her pocket, then wrapped her sister in her quilt for the last time, the missing corner tucked deep inside so that no one would ever know what she had done.

Her sister’s body was wrapped in the quilt when her father buried her tiny body.

Through the ice, Erin traced the green Irish-chain pattern, darkened with mold and age. Her fingertips slid across ice. She had never expected to see this quilt again.

Aghast, she realized what its presence here meant.

To obtain it, Rasputin must have despoiled her sister’s grave.

9:11
P.M.

Elizabeth ran through the maze, dragging Rhun along by the silver manacles. Nadia trailed, ever her dark shadow. Their human opponents could never match her group’s preternatural speed. Elizabeth should have no difficulty reaching the center of the maze well ahead of the blond doctor.

Though she cared little about the ambitions of the Sanguinists, she knew she must win this contest. If Cardinal Bernard ever decided that she was
not
the Woman of Learning, her life would be forfeit. Her fingers strayed again to the soft scarf that covered the wound on her throat. It was a shallow cut, a reminder of the depths of the order’s trust in her. If Bernard’s faith in her faltered, the next cut would be far deeper.

So she set a swift pace, memorizing every turn in the dark. She needed no light as she sped along. But with every step, her newly healed throat ached from the cold. Erin’s blood had partially revived her, but it was not enough, not nearly enough. It surprised her that the woman had offered such a boon—and even more so that Erin recognized the grievous nature of the Sanguinists’ assault on her.

The woman grew ever more intriguing to her. Elizabeth had even begun to comprehend Rhun’s fascination with her. Still, that would not stop Elizabeth from defeating the human in this task.

Elizabeth’s boots trod across the snow, her legs hurrying her forward. She ignored the distractions along the way, those rooms that had been sculpted to draw the eye and stir the imagination. Only one chamber had slowed her progress. It was a room that held a life-size carousel of horses made of ice. She remembered seeing such a display in Paris back in the summer of 1605, when such attractions had begun to replace the old jousting tourneys. She remembered the delight on her son Paul’s face upon seeing the bright costumes and prancing stallions.

An ache for her lost family, for her children long dead and grandchildren never seen, welled inside her.

Both sorrow and anger drove her onward.

Sweeping along, she peered through the many ice windows, each cunningly fashioned, but none provided clues as to which direction she should go. At a crossroads, she breathed in the smell of cold and snow, trying to judge the wind for a clue to the correct path.

Then from ahead came a faint rustling, hinting at unseen lurkers. No heartbeats accompanied the noises.

Strigoi
.

She must be close to the heart of the maze.

Focusing on the sounds, she increased her pace again—then something caught the corner of her eye. Something frozen inside one of the ice windows, like a fly in amber. She stopped to study it, drawing Rhun to a halt, too.

Suspended in the middle of the ice was a rectangular object the size of her two hands put together. A shiny black cloth wrapped it snugly, tied with a dirty scarlet cord. She knew what it held.

It was her journal.

What is it doing here?

It was hard enough to imagine that the book had survived the ravages of centuries. It was even harder to fathom that someone had plucked it from its long-ago hiding place and brought it here.

Why?

The shiny cloth was oilskin. Her fingertips remembered its sticky surface, and her mind’s eye saw the first page as clearly as if she had drawn it yesterday.

It was a picture of an alder leaf, along with a diagram of its roots and stems.

Those early pages had contained drawings of herbs, listing their properties, the secrets to their uses, the places where they might be gathered on her estate. She had drawn the plants and flowers herself, written the instructions in her fairest hand by candlelight during the long winter hours. But she had not stopped there, remembering when her studies had turned darker, as dark as the heart Rhun had blackened.

Elizabeth wrote the last entry while the peasant girl died in front of her, blood seeping from a hundred cuts. Elizabeth had thought her stronger than that. She had mistimed the girl’s death, the outcome a failure. She felt a stab of impatience, but reminded herself that even such failures brought her knowledge.

Behind her, another girl whimpered from her cage. She would be the next subject, but her fate could wait until tomorrow. As if she sensed this, the caged girl grew quiet, wrapping her arms around her knees and rocking.

Elizabeth scribbled observations by the light of the fire, recording each detail—how quickly the first girl died, how long she could wait before turning such subject into a
strigoi,
how long it took for each to die in that state.

Over and over, with different girls, Elizabeth experimented.

Slowly and carefully, she learned the secrets of who she was, what she was.

Such knowledge would only make her stronger.

Elizabeth lifted her hand to touch the ice. She had not thought to see her journal again. She had hidden it within her castle once her trial had started. It contained more than six hundred names, many more girls than she had been charged with killing. She had secured it deep under her castle, beneath a stone so large that no mortal man could lift it.